1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 13 of 32.
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betheirah offered a teaching that collapses the distance between God's promise and its fulfillment at the Red Sea. God told Moses: "I have already fulfilled My pr...
The Mekhilta offers a vivid parable to distinguish God's warrior nature from every human warrior. Consider, it says, a warrior in a province who is fully equipped with every weapon...
Quail fell from the sky in quantities that defy imagination. Rabbi Yoshiyah, quoted in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (a 3rd-century CE halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive comme...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai offers a striking interpretation of the word "statutes" as it appears in the Torah's legislation. Where one might expect this term to refer to ritual laws or c...
Why was the Temple, the dwelling place of the Divine Presence on earth, built specifically on the tribal territory of Benjamin? The Mekhilta provides two remarkable reasons, both r...
The Torah states plainly: "He shall be put to death." But where? Under whose authority? Left unqualified, these words might mean that anyone could carry out the execution, a mob, a...
The Mekhilta catalogs the names used to describe idolatry and contrasts them with the names used to describe God. The contrast is devastating. Idolatry is mentioned only in derogat...
R. Eliezer addresses an apparent contradiction in the laws of the Passover offering. One verse describes the Pesach as taken specifically from the flock, "an unblemished lamb" (Exo...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai made a breathtaking claim: the sun and the moon themselves serve as eternal witnesses that God had already committed to splitting the sea for Israel long be...
The Mekhilta presents another parable contrasting human warriors with God, this time focusing on the problem of aging. A human warrior reaches the height of his power at forty year...
An alternative calculation in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael pushed the scale of the quail miracle even further. Where Rabbi Yossi Haglili estimated three parasangs per side, other ...
Yithro warned Moses with a vivid and frightening prophecy (Exodus 18:18): "You will languish." The Hebrew word used here prompted two different interpretations from the rabbis, and...
"And the voice of the shofar" (Exodus 19:19), the Mekhilta declares that this is a propitious sign in all of Scripture. Wherever the shofar is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, it sig...
The Torah declares of a certain offender: "he shall be put to death." But the text does not specify the method of execution. The Mekhilta records a debate about which form of capit...
(Exodus 23:14) commands: "Three festivals shall you celebrate for Me in the year." The Mekhilta asks why this verse is needed when (Exodus 23:17) already says "Three times shall ev...
R. Akiva confronts an apparent contradiction in the Torah about the Paschal offering. One verse (Deuteronomy 16:2) states, "And you shall slaughter the Pesach to the L-rd your G-d,...
Rabbi Bana'ah taught that God split the Red Sea for the Israelites in the merit of their ancestor Abraham. The proof lies in a striking verbal parallel between two verses. When Abr...
The Mekhilta presents yet another parable about human warriors, this time addressing the most dangerous flaw of all: uncontrolled rage. A warrior in a province, it says, may become...
When God sent quail to feed the Israelites in the wilderness, the Mekhilta raises a practical question that reveals something remarkable about divine generosity. One might assume t...
The Mekhilta records a sharp legal debate about how to determine the correct form of execution for a kidnapper. The Torah says a kidnapper must be put to death, using the phrase "m...
The Torah commands that three times a year, "all your males shall be seen" before God. The Mekhilta systematically identifies who is excluded from this obligation through a series ...
Rabbi Yishmael confronted a puzzle in (Deuteronomy 16:2), which says: "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God, sheep and cattle." But the Passover offering is supposed to...
Rabbi Shimon HaTemani declared that God split the Red Sea in the merit of a single commandment: circumcision. The covenant of Abraham, inscribed in the flesh of every Jewish male, ...
The Mekhilta offers a parable to capture how repentance can still turn aside a sentence already pronounced. There is a warrior in a province, and as soon as the arrow leaves his ha...
Jethro watched his son-in-law Moses judging the entire nation of Israel alone, from morning until evening, and he gave him a piece of advice wrapped in a parable. "Look at that bea...
"Moses spoke and God answered him with a voice" (Exodus 19:19). Rabbi Eliezer asks: what does this verse actually tell us? The answer reveals something remarkable about how the Ten...
Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, offered an alternative reading of (Deuteronomy 16:2): "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God, sheep and cattle." Rather than identifying the...
Rabbi Avshalom the Elder told a parable to explain why God responded to Moses' extended prayer at the Red Sea with what seemed like impatience. The parable captures the tenderness ...
The Mekhilta offers a parable about a mortal king going to war. When a king of flesh and blood prepares for battle, emissaries from neighboring lands come to him requesting sustena...
Rabbi Eliezer described one of the most vivid and beautiful scenes in all of rabbinic literature: the step-by-step process by which the manna descended from heaven each morning. Be...
Yithro's advice to Moses came in a sequence of precise instructions, each one carrying deeper meaning than its plain sense. "Now, hearken to my voice" (Exodus 18:19). And the Mekhi...
Rabbi Akiva challenged Rabbi Eliezer with a question about what happened when God spoke the commandments at Sinai. Moses spoke and God answered. But what does that mean? Rabbi Elie...
The sages here are pressing on a question of how a convicted murderer is to be executed. The objection raised is that the death penalty could be carried out by spilling the offende...
The Jewish calendar is not purely lunar. It is lunisolar, adjusted periodically so that the festivals fall in their proper seasons. The Mekhilta traces this practice of calendar ad...
The Mekhilta presents another contrast between a mortal king at war and God. A king of flesh and blood, while engaged in battle, cannot supply all of his soldiers with what they ne...
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael expounds the moment of revelation at Sinai and guards a careful theological point. Scripture says, "And the L-rd descended upon Mou...
"They shall not appear before Me empty-handed", the Torah requires that the pilgrims who come to the Temple on the three festivals must bring something. But what? The Mekhilta says...
Rebbi reads the scene at the Sea of Reeds as a tense exchange between God and Moses. When Moses cried out in prayer as Pharaoh’s chariots bore down, the Holy One answered with a po...
The Song at the Sea declares that "the L–rd is a man of war" (Exodus 15:3), and the sages of the Mekhilta recoil from the words. How can Scripture call the Holy One a "man"? Is He ...
This midrash of the Mekhilta dwells on the plague that struck Israel after the people demanded meat in the wilderness and were buried under a storm of quail. Scripture says (Number...
Rabbi Yossi raised a fundamental question about the boundary between heaven and earth. He cited (Psalms 115:16), which declares that "the heavens are the heavens of the Lord, and t...
The Mekhilta examines one of the most consequential legal distinctions in the Torah: the difference between intentional killing and accidental death. The text lays out three vivid ...
This teaching of the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael interprets the pilgrimage command (Exodus 23:15) "They shall not appear before Me empty-handed." When Israel comes up to the Temple f...
The sages offered a bold explanation for why God split the Red Sea for the Israelites. It was not primarily for Israel's sake. God acted for the sake of the divine Name itself. The...
"the L-rd is His name." The Mekhilta seizes on this phrase from the Song at the Sea to teach that God conquers through His name alone. It is with His name that He wars, and He has ...
(Exodus 16:13) says simply that "in the morning there was a layer of dew." But the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael saw in this plain statement a description of one of the most elaborate ...
The Mekhilta presents a series of vivid scenarios involving accidental death, each illustrating the same legal principle. A man pulls a heavy roller up to a rooftop, and it slips f...
(Exodus 23:16) refers to Shavuoth (the Festival of Weeks) as "the festival of the harvest, the first-fruits of your labor." The Mekhilta notes that this description appears within ...
